Scars of the Past

Thank you for letting him go.

Camilla raised her glass across the reunion table, sweet as anything, and the whole room turned to look.

On her wrist, catching the candlelight, sat the Fenwick heirloom bracelet.

The one that used to be mine.

Really, she said, the dimple deepening. If you hadn't walked away six years ago, I'd never have gotten to be the future Mrs. Fenwick.

Cassius sat beside her, his arm draped around her shoulders. He didn't look at me.

"It's all in the past," he said. Cold. Even.

The whole table leaned in, waiting for my face to break.

I slid my hand over my wrist, over the scar not one of them would ever see, and I made my mouth curve.

"Right," I said. "The two of us. We've been nothing to each other for a long time."

Chapter 1

"So she's the one who ended it, right? Evangeline?"

The second Camilla left for the restroom, the whispers started.

Six years since the breakup. First time I'd laid eyes on him since.

I only came because the reunion organizer swore up and down that Cassius Fenwick wasn't going to show.

And there he was, across the table. Half a smile on his mouth, nothing behind his eyes.

Everyone knows the name now. Youngest self-made CEO in the city, Ivy degree, back from overseas with an empire trailing after him. The watch on his wrist cost more than most people in that room made in a year.

They all leaned toward him like plants toward the sun.

Then there was me. My coat sleeve had gone thin at the cuff. I kept my hands in my lap.

"It was her call," Cassius said, easy, answering the question the table was too polite to put to him directly. "She ended it."

The rest they filled in themselves. Gold digger. Couldn't hack the lean years. Bet on the wrong man and lost the whole table.

"Hey, Evangeline. That guy you took up with after me leaving. Didn't he end up inside?" Someone smirked over the rim of a glass. "Heard you covered his debts, too. That why you showed up tonight? Shaking the tree for cash?"

I smiled and said nothing.

Across from me, Cassius watched. Quiet, dark, not blinking. He didn't say one word in my defense.

He didn't need to. The silence was doing plenty.

The door opened and Camilla came back, read the air, and laughed.

"What did I miss?"

Just like that, he moved. His hand found hers, warm, easy. "Nothing. Old friends catching up."

She settled in, her eyes on me, and let the dimple show.

"Cass has told me all about you," she said. "If you hadn't let go back then, you'd be the one wearing the Fenwick name."

Half the table lit up at that. There's a particular joy people save for watching someone fall.

They remembered what I used to be. Back when the Winslows owned half this city and I never walked into a room I didn't own.

Envy like that doesn't burn off with time. It just waits. Years later it comes back as a reason to kick you while you're already down.

"It's all in the past." Cassius again, cold enough to shut the subject.

The table let it drop. You don't push a man like that.

Camilla lifted her glass to me anyway.

"Thank you. For stepping aside." Sweet. Loud enough for everyone. "You have to come to the wedding."

I pressed my hand over the scar on my wrist.

"Congratulations," I said. Nothing more.

"Why didn't you just tell him the truth?"

Frankie was livid on my behalf, loud through the phone.

The reunion had let out early. I stood in the wind with my coat wrapped tight and breathed a cloud of white into the dark.

"He has someone," I said.

A beat of silence on her end.

"Someone."

"A fiance."

Down the street the others peeled off in twos and threes, laughing, and the streetlights broke across the snow like shattered glass.

"You finally got to see him. After everything. After how hard you"

"Frankie." I closed my eyes. "Nobody waits in the same spot forever."

Some things, if you don't say them in the moment, saying them later only turns your stomach. There's no point to it.

The wind stung my eyes until they watered.

I'd clawed my way out of the mud for years just to stand in front of him one time with my head up. Do it clean. Do it right.

I was six years too late.

"I'm done."

Chapter 2

Below freezing, my booked cab stuck in a queue that wouldn't move, my hands stiff inside two minutes.

Heels clicked behind me. Then that soft, sweet voice.

"Cass. Look at the snow. Isn't it gorgeous?"

"It's cold out. Wait in the car. I'll be a minute." His voice. You'd know it anywhere.

"Don't be long."

She passed close on her way by. Slowed just enough to turn her wrist toward me, so the bracelet caught the light.

His grandmother's. The Fenwick heirloom.

It used to sit on my wrist. When we ended things, I had someone carry it back to him.

Six years, and it had found a new wrist. So had he.

So she wasn't just the girlfriend. She was the fiance.

Then the lot emptied out and it was only the two of us. My cab still hadn't come.

He stood behind me and said nothing. Two shadows overlapping under the streetlight.

My mind slid back six years, to the night we broke up. He'd wrecked his car racing to reach me.

His brother had called, voice like a blade.

"Cass is in the hospital."

"Is his life in danger?"

"Oh, so otherwise you wouldn't come." A pause, shaking with it. "Do you have any idea what that man has given up for you? You couldn't pay it back in three lifetimes. And you just forget all of it?"

He was one breath from calling me an ungrateful bitch to my face.

He wasn't wrong, from where he stood. I was the one who threw Cassius away. Of course they hated me.

"How much do you owe?"

Cassius pulled me out of the memory. Flat. Cold.

"None of your business."

I dragged in a breath of freezing air. It caught in my throat, still raw from the wine, and I doubled over coughing.

The cold sliced down my windpipe. I gripped the streetlight and shook, eyes streaming.

He watched me do it. Didn't move.

A cab rolled up. The driver leaned across the seat. "Kingsley Court, right?"

"Yes."

I braced on my knees, got myself upright, reached for the door. A hand closed around my arm and hauled me back.

I hit his chest before I could stop myself.

"What are you going out there for?"

Kingsley Court. Old money behind gated walls. They don't let just anyone through.

I shoved at him. He caught my wrist and turned it in his grip.

His skin was burning. The heat of it landed somewhere under my ribs and stayed. His thumb sat over my pulse, and I knew he could feel how fast it was going, and I couldn't make it slow.

I pulled twice. Didn't come free. My head tipped back to a face I couldn't read.

"Was there something you wanted, Mr. Fenwick?"

His mouth went flat. Black eyes, deep and still, giving me nothing.

The wind tore my hair loose across my face.

I said his thought out loud for him. "You're like the rest of them. You think the money I make is dirty."

"Fifty grand a month." He cut me off, cold.

"Excuse me?"

Something contemptuous surfaced in his eyes. "You needed cash, didn't you. Fifty. A hundred. Name the number it takes to get you."

Chapter 3

My hand came up before I'd decided to swing it.

The crack of it split the cold night open.

Five clean fingerprints bloomed across Cassius Fenwick's face.

Somewhere behind us a woman shrieked and shoved the car door open.

"Live your life," I told him. "And keep your hands where they belong."

I left him standing there and got in the cab.

"You hit him?"

Frankie pressed a mug of hot water into my hands.

"He offered to keep me." I curled into the corner of the couch and rode out another wave of cramp twisting through my stomach, sipping slow.

A minute later I bolted for the bathroom and brought it all back up.

Frankie rubbed my back. "Bad stomach and you're out drinking anyway."

I caught my breath and wiped my mouth. My throat burned the whole way down.

"All these years you've carried him," she said. "Was it worth it?"

Fourteen years of loving one person. And he'd handed my seat at the table to someone else and thanked me for it.

I looked at the girl in the mirror. Wet lashes, black hair stuck to a pale forehead.

Her voice came at me from somewhere far away. "If you hadn't cut him loose, he wouldn't have any of this today"

I thought about the fiance instead.

She had a brightness on her that I'd lost somewhere. A long time ago, I think I used to look like that too.

Then I fell, hard. And by the time I clawed my way up out of the ditch, everything had changed.

Frankie finished her shift at Kingsley Court and we walked home to the rental hand in hand.

My phone rang. His brother.

"Evangeline. If money's tight, I can find you work."

I said nothing and waited for the rest of it.

"They're getting married next month. Camilla's a good girl. Good family, too. You"

"I won't bother him again," I said. "You have my word."

He went quiet, then tried to explain anyway. "We just want him to have a good life."

"Sure."

Every friend I'd had back then. Every last one of them, standing on his side.

The call ended. Frankie's eyes had gone red. "They don't understand anything."

"It doesn't matter."

I was going to be in the city a while, so I took a job near the rental.

In the interview, the HR woman gave me a careful look. "You've had depression?"

"That was a long time ago. I'm well now. I have a letter from my doctor."

Two other companies had run their background checks and dropped me for the same reason.

This one was small. The offer came that same night.

I told myself the reunion had been the last time Cassius and I would ever cross paths.

Three days later he dropped into the company out of nowhere and became my boss.

And my desk got moved. Right outside his office door.

"I decline," I said.

"Fine." He didn't look up. Flat as ice. "Leave your resignation with HR."

I laughed at the sheer nerve of it. "You'd fire me over a desk?"

His pen stopped. He finally lowered himself to look at me.

"I gave you a choice, that's all. Or do you think I want something from you?"

The words stuck. I thought about Frankie the night before, arguing herself hoarse over a little rent money. I made my mouth smile. "You're a man of great principle, Mr. Fenwick. Nothing for me to be afraid of."

He gave a small nod. "Thanks. Shut the door on your way out. And turn your chair around. I don't want to see your face."

After that, we barely crossed paths at all.

But my chair stayed exactly where he'd put it. Backed to him, three feet from his door.

He said he didn't want to see my face.

He just kept it that close. And once, when I glanced up, his eyes were already on the back of my head, and they cut away the second mine moved.

Chapter 4

A week later the company threw a team dinner.

I was the new hire, so they poured and poured until I lost count.

"Come on, Winslow, drink up. Or it comes out of your paycheck."

"Relax, if you pass out we'll get you home. We're all girls here. What's the harm?"

The manager laughed and kept the glasses coming, and with the whole table egging me on I threw back the last one of the night and went down against the tabletop.

After that, nothing.

I woke in a wide bed.

Sunlight bright enough to blind. I pushed upright and the blanket slid off me. A soft hotel robe underneath.

I sat there a second. Then I got up and walked out.

Cassius was in the open living room, one leg crossed over the other, reading the morning paper. The same hotel robe.

He glanced up. "You're awake. Breakfast's on the table. Eat, then get some more sleep."

Cold went through me, head to heel. "Did we"

He tossed the paper onto the coffee table and drew his collar open just enough to show the mark on his throat.

"Unfortunately," he said, "last night was your idea."

The floor dropped out from under me. Where last night should have been, there was nothing at all.

"That's not possible."

He laid a contract in front of me. My thumbprint was pressed into the bottom of the page.

I read enough to get the shape of it. I would be his mistress. He would pay me a hundred thousand a month.

I stared at my own print on the page, and my hand started to shake.

"There's no way I put that there"

"No?" A soft laugh. "You sure?"

He watched me, calm and certain, and I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

He ignored how lost I looked and produced a small voice recorder. "I happened to catch your little monologue last night. Want to hear the ugly things running around inside your head, Miss Winslow?"

The chill went through me like I'd been dropped into a frozen lake.

Shame came up so fast the room tilted. My nails bit into my palms, knuckles white.

Thoughts like that were filthy enough kept buried. Spoken out loud, logged as evidence, they made me into something criminal.

Cassius kept his eyes low, unreadable. "Lusting after a taken man. Tsk." He turned the recorder over in his fingers. "How about I let them all hear it, Evangeline?"

"Is this you getting your revenge?"

"Yes." He said it like it cost him nothing. "You didn't care whether I lived or died back then. Why would I make things easy for you now?"

The clock in the corner ticked. My own pulse came up under it, knocking at my eardrums.

"Two choices." He laid them down like line items. "Honor the contract. Or the recording goes public."

My lips had cracked dry. I lifted my head.

"Then let it go public."

Under that cold, flat stare, I heard the words leave me, level and numb. "I'm not going to be the other woman, Cassius."

He studied me. Then he smiled.

"And who exactly do you think you are?"

"Do you even have a choice left?"

Chapter 5

Frankie called, her voice scraped thin. "Evangeline. They want fifty thousand."

The sky hung gray. No sun anywhere in it.

She'd spent everything she had getting me treated. There was nothing left saved. My own account was almost as thin.

"They said if you don't pay, they'll drag your whole story into the open. And your mom's ashes, her things. They won't tell you where any of it is."

"I'll take an advance on my salary. Borrow the rest. I should have it together by next month."

"Okay."

I sat with the phone a while. Then I pressed a number I'd been circling for days.

It rang a long time before it picked up.

"Miss Winslow. Is something wrong?"

I breathed out a cloud of fog. "Dr. Brooks. I'm sorry to bother you. I"

He sounded busy. He moved through somewhere loud, then somewhere quieter, and asked, patient, "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

I pulled in a breath. "Could you lend me forty thousand?"

First time in my life I'd ever asked anyone for money. The second it left my mouth my whole body went up like it was on fire.

Noise broke out on his end. "Dr. Brooks, we've got an emergency surgery."

"On my way."

I hadn't let myself hope for much. I was braced for him to just hang up.

At the last second, Everett said, short: "Send me the account number. It'll be in by end of day."

The line went dead.

The sky was still gray.

The cold dial tone had gone warm against my ear. I stared at the phone until my eyes stung.

That evening the manager rapped his knuckles on my desk. "Client dinner tonight. You're coming."

A few hours before, I'd taken that month's advance off him. With the loan and the little I'd saved, I had the fifty thousand. Barely.

I walked into the private room. And there he was. Cassius.

That tall frame, working the table like it cost him nothing. Chandelier light carved out the clean line of his profile.

The manager nudged me forward, and every eye in the room swung to me.

"Mr. Fenwick, one of yours?"

Cassius gave me a lazy glance. "New hire," he said, smiling.

"Since when does a new hire get walked in by Mr. Fenwick himself? Pretty little thing, too."

Everyone sat. The manager put me right next to Cassius and dropped his voice. "Be sharp tonight. Take the drinks when they need taking."

Someone asked, delicately, "Mr. Fenwick, this new employee of yours. Can she drink, or can't she?"

Before Cassius could answer, the manager jumped in. "She can, she can."

He pushed a glass in front of me. "Start us off."

Cassius said nothing, just tapped one finger against the table, smiling.

I lifted the glass, held my breath, and drained it.

The liquor tore down my throat and lit a line of fire all the way into my stomach, where it churned and screamed.

They cheered and reached for the next one. Cassius cut in and turned the subject, and the room rolled on, loud and warm. People kept trying to toast him. He waved them off, said his stomach was bad, didn't touch a drop.

Every glass got funneled, one way or another, into me.

When I couldn't take another, I made it to the restroom.

I ran the tap and heaved over the sink, dry and endless, my hair coming loose and slipping into the basin until it hung soaked.

I texted Frankie, and then there was nothing left in me. I folded down over the counter, head bowed, breathing hard with my eyes shut.

Footsteps came down the hall. Unhurried.

Chapter 6

The door opened.

I thought it was some woman coming to use the restroom.

Then Cassius's voice, level. "That's you done already?"

I gathered what strength I had, pushed myself up, and swayed past him toward the door.

He caught my arm and hauled me back.

A big hand settled over the back of my neck. Burning hot.

"Let go of me." Stomach acid had scorched my throat raw. Every word came with its own small pain.

He steered me to the mirror without effort, turned me to face it, and tipped my chin up. Cold smile. "Take a good look at yourself. You want to walk out there like this, with people around who'd love the excuse?"

The girl in the mirror had wet eyes, two flushed cheeks, hair straggling at her ears, collar fallen open.

His gaze moved over me through the glass, deep and unhurried, and my skin crawled under it.

I shut my eyes, shaking a little. "And who in this room has more of an excuse than you?"

He gave a low laugh and kissed the shell of my ear. "Come home with me tonight. Say yes."

"Go to h"

He caught the word in my mouth and pressed it back down, pulling the air out of my lungs.

The alcohol had my blood moving wrong, too hot, slamming through me. The light smeared into one blur. Every place he touched landed like acid on the raw spot behind my ribs.

A cold sweat broke over me. I hit at him with nothing behind it.

It was like being dragged back into those years. Looking out at a bright, gaudy world I didn't fit into anymore.

"Cassius. Please. Let me go."

I was falling without a sound, straight down, and I hit the bottom of the well hard.

It probably hurt.

I just couldn't feel it anymore.

"Evangeline!"

He was calling my name.

And the look in his eyes wasn't the one that wanted me dead anymore.

He'd panicked